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Archive for tag "Sustainable Social Mobility"

Ecosummit TV: This year Ecosummit partnered with Tesla Motors to provide Model S test drives and first-hand insight into the automotive future invented in California. Following a 100% electric strategy since its foundation in 2003, Tesla forces the big automakers to accelerate their electric transformation, too. In February, Philipp Schroeder joined Tesla from Sonnenbatterie and now manages sales and business development in Germany and Austria. At ECO14 Berlin, Philipp agreed that Tesla is on its way to become the most valuable car company in the world. When we wrote about the super hero of the smart green economy in May 2011, Tesla was valued at $2.6B. Now it has a market cap of $30.6B and expects to deliver 33.000 cars to its customers in 2014. BMW, the German car maker with the strongest electric mobility strategy thanks to the purpose built EVs i3 and i8 and the inhouse carbon fiber production, is valued at $60.3B delivering 2 million cars this year (BMW investor presentation Nov 2014). When Tesla’s Model III, priced at $35.000, starts racing against the BMW 3 series in 2017, we will find out quickly how car drivers really think when making their next purchase decision.

Ecosummit TV: Klaus Dibbern pitches Flinc at ECO13 Berlin. The German smart green startup enables dynamic ride sharing and runs a growing social mobility network. Flinc also offers a state-of-the-art ride sharing solution for companies that want to do something good for their employees. Flinc is integrated with Garmin’s Navigon navigation system as well as the ConnectedDrive services in the new BMW i3. With a focus on regional transportation, the system manages over half a million ride offers per month. Flinc currently raises a new financing round and you can meet co-founder Benjamin Kirschner at ECO13 London to talk about cooperation and the future of sustainable social mobility.

Ecosummit TV: Oliver Lünstedt pitches Carzapp at ECO13 Berlin. While there are now 4 p2p car sharing startups in the German market, Carzapp is the first one to have developed their own hardware solution called ZappKit. The ZappKit enables wireless car access with smartphones used as digital keys. The magic hardware box also includes GPS and an immobiliser that prevents theft. While Carzapp is about to start their beta test in Berlin, they also offer their ZappKit to companies with significant car fleets they want to share. The B2B business of Carzapp is bound to grow quickly as the ZappKit is pretty price competitive. Carzapp is backed by angels and raised €250K in a crowdfunding round on Seedmatch earlier this year. Now Carzapp looks for fresh money to accelerate its growth. Meet Oliver at ECO13 London to get an update and talk smart green business.

Ecosummit TV: Niels Beisinghoff pitches Bettertaxi at Ecosummit Berlin 2013. The Berlin-based smart green startup enters a crowded market of mobility apps and competes directly with Mytaxi. However, Bettertaxi connects to existing taxi dispatch centres and works everywhere in Germany. They also want to enable taxi ride sharing to make taxi mobility cheaper and greener. This is a cool idea which we had back in 2010 when we envisioned Sustainable Social Mobility (Weniger Autos ist mehr). Now Bettertaxi wants to raise €500K to accelerate its growth. Check out their iPhone and Android app to find out which one is the best taxi service in Germany. The ultimate goal are ubiquitous shared electric taxis. That’s what smart green cities really need.

Ecosummit TV: First the bad news: after burning $850M in 6 years Better Place files for bankruptcy. That’s not what you call a lean startup. The electric mobility operator had to accept that car makers don’t support a global startup standard for switchable batteries. Now the good news: peer-to-peer ride sharing startup Lyft raises $60M for global expansion from Andreessen Horowitz. To fight off the professional taxi and limo driver lobby, Lyft drivers get donations rather than payments from their riders. But VCs love transactions whatever they are called, especially if they smell like Airbnb on the road. Here in Europe, we eat humble pie. At ECO12 Düsseldorf, Fabienne Herlaut (Ecomobilité Ventures) discusses profitability with Alexander Zosel (E-volo), Oliver Lünstedt (Carzapp), Klaus Dibbern (Flinc) and Thomas delos Santos (Innovative Mobility). Some inspiration from the US may help.

Ecosummit TV: Oliver Lünstedt, CEO of Carzapp, pitches the German p2p car sharing startup. While there are already 3 peer-2-peer car sharing startups in Germany, Carzapp is the first one to have developed their own hardware solution called ZappKit. The ZappKit enables wireless car access with smartphones used as digital keys. The magic hardware box also includes GPS and an immobiliser that prevents theft. Moreover, the Berlin-based startup has an idea for the cost-efficient rollout of electric cars and participates in the electric mobility showcase Berlin-Brandenburg by adapting their platform to support p2p electric car sharing. Carzapp is backed by angels and looks for €1M to enter the German market in the first half of 2013.

Ecosummit TV: Not many people have the guts to found an electric vehicle startup these days. Thomas delos Santos, CEO of Innovative Mobility, is one of them. His pitch at Ecosummit Düsseldorf 2012 provides the full story behind the electric microcar called Colibri. The Colibri will be unveiled at the auto show in Geneva in March 2013. The light electric vehicle (LEV) for city dwellers will cost €8.9K plus monthly battery leasing costs of €55. Colibri shall hit the market in 2015 and can be pre-ordered in 2014 – provided that Thomas manages to raise the rather large funds needed for series development and production. We cross our fingers as we want to see the smart green Colibri on the street.

Ecosummit TV: At Ecosummit Düsseldorf 2012, Fabienne Herlaut, Managing Partner of Ecomobilité Ventures, presents her multi-corporate fund which is focused on investing in ecomobility startups in Europe. Ecomobilité Ventures is financed by French national railway operator SNCF, mobile telephone operator Orange and energy company Total. While the €25M fund is still young, it already invested in 3 sustainable mobility startups: Move About, EZ‐Wheel and Ouicar. Fabienne is looking for a fourth corporate investor from the automotive industry, preferably from Germany. At the same time, she is always interested in meeting fundable ecomobility startups that look for smart green investors with industry expertise.

Ecosummit TV: Klaus Dibbern pitches Flinc, the famous realtime ride sharing startup. Flinc is integrated with several navigation systems and supports iPhone and Android. The German cleantech startup has got over 100.000 users and goes international now. They have a B2B and B2C business model based on transaction fees, subscriptions and affiliate marketing. We believe Flinc is one of the hottest sustainable social mobility startups in Europe.

Ecosummit TV: Gorka Espiau, Head of International Programmes at Hiriko, pitches the Spanish EV startup at ECO12 Berlin. Hiriko aims at reinventing sustainable social mobility in smart green cities by building a foldable electric vehicle optimised for car sharing that was originally invented at the MIT Media Lab. The networked city car shall only be offered in car sharing fleets which is a pretty disruptive distribution strategy. The first prototype is available and Hiriko is looking for investors who want to accelerate their vision of sustainable urban mobility.

Ecosummit TV: Fabienne Herlaut is the Managing Partner of the French corporate VC Ecomobilité Ventures that has 4 very powerful limited partners: SNCF, PSA Peugeot Citroen, Total and Orange. Fabienne presents her new €30M fund at Ecosummit Berlin 2012 and shares her investment strategy into smart green startups working on new technology and business models for sustainable mobility. I strongly recommend that you talk to Fabienne if you are an ambitious ecomobility startup with an international strategy that wants to take advantage of the added value of this promising group of corporates.

Ecosummit TV: Mar Alarcón is the founder and CEO of Social Car, Spain’s leading p2p car sharing operator. Before Social Car Mar co-founded Social Energy, a PV project developer based in China. I like the brand name Social Car very much and I am very bullish with regards to the business model of p2p car sharing as it is very capital efficient and scaleable. Mar did a great pitch at Ecosummit 2012 on 22-23 March in Berlin.

As a warmup for ECO12, I would like to present 3 smart green startups from Germany that are in a unique position to be successful on the global Cleantech market. They have unique technology, achieved major milestones and look for strategic investors, partners and clients to enter new markets and grow faster. Let’s take a closer look at SolarFuel (Power to Gas), Heliatek (Organic Photovoltaics) and Flinc (Realtime Ride Sharing). All 3 startups are nominated for the ECO12 Award and join Ecosummit 2012 on 22-23 March in Berlin.

Taxi 2.0: myTaxi, a very useful mobility service of Intelligent Apps, today raised €10M from car2go (Daimler), T-Venture (Deutsche Telekom), Xing Founder Lars Hinrichs (Cinco Capital, Hackfwd) and KfW. myTaxi is the taxi centre for the Mobile Economy and the app is available for iPhone and Android. Interestingly, Robert Henrich, CEO of car2go, believes that “car2go and myTaxi do not compete but complement each other.” In fact, I partly disagree as one way car sharing actually enables short trips from A to B leaving the car behind, the same way taxis do.

At ECO11, Klaus Dibbern, CEO of Flinc, pitched his dynamic ride sharing startup to investors and was interviewed by our Ecosummit TV moderator Ane Mari Aakernes. Flinc matches people that want to join the social mobility network to share rides to make money (driver) or save money (passenger). If you share rides in shared cars including taxis then we like to call it Sustainable Social Mobility. That’s the future of mobility. Flinc already has €1.2M funding and looks for a new funding round of approximately €1M. Klaus agreed to share his Flinc slides as PDF.

The 3rd German Electric Vehicle (EV) Congress takes place on 8-9 June 2011 in Bonn in the former Bundestag, indeed a spectacular conference venue. After attending the 2nd EV Congress last year, I was invited to join the programme advisory board by Michael Carus, CEO of the organiser Nova Institute. Nova Institute is a research and consulting firm that is ususally focused on renewable resources, bio feedstock and biodegradable materials. Together with IAV, the automotive engineers that have 4.000 employees, Nova once again put together an exciting programme looking into the future of mobility.

Going smart green now should be our motivation on all levels. For the smart green transformation I propose a strategy based on 7 pillars. This strategy has to be elaborated into a full-featured global master plan. I invite everybody to contribute to the elaboration of the global master plan and to join its execution.
1. Our global goal should be the fast transformation to the Smart Green Economy.
2. Cities are the epicentre of economic activity and must go smart green now.
3. Companies should adopt smart green strategies offering sustainable products and services.
4. Fast cost reduction of smart green technologies is the key leverage for the mass market.
5. We have to change our lifestyle and become smart green consumers.
6. We have to shift political and financial power to the United Nations.
7. Huge investments of human and financial capital are necessary.

Let’s start now, improve continuously, measure our progress every year and use open innovation and transparent communication so that we can learn from each other. Let’s share our ideas and know-how online on a global scale.

Based in Spain’s Basque country, Hiriko is the first company to build the electric City Car developed by MIT’s Medialab. Hiriko sounds Japanese but it is in fact a mix of Basque and Spanish: hiri = urban, ko = short for coche (car). Hiriko’s networked urban cars are designed to be used only as shared cars. Imagine a future where you can take any car when you leave your home or office. Imagine a future where all shared cars are electric. That’s where we have to be.